Grapevine

TerraMod Consulting Inc. is pleased to announce that effective May 1 the company is located at 1200, 815 8th Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 3P2. TerraMod is in its fourth year and has 3 employees.

TerraMod Consulting Inc. provides professional high quality technical services offering comprehensive geostatistical data analysis, modeling, resource estimation and simulation solutions for the natural resource industries. In addition, they also provide geostatistics training, software sales and support of Isatis, the advanced geostatistical toolkit by Geovariances, and for the Reservoir Modeling Line of products from Beicip-Franlab, and IFP group company. To round out TerraMod's consulting toolkit, third party software for velocity modeling and generation of seismic attributes is available.

TerraMod's petroleum industry projects have focused on time-to-depth conversion methods, multivariate seismic attribute studies for mapping reservoir properties, 1D electro-facies modeling in wells and 3D reservoir models for reservoir simulation and management. Their mineral industry projects have included both Global and Local resource estimates applying 3D block Kriging and non-linear geostatistical techniques such as Change of Support Modeling and Indicator Kriging.

Shared Knowledge Helps the Oil and Gas Industry to Overcome the Challenge of Overpressure

Scott Pickford hosted and co-organized with GeoPOP, TotalFinaElf and BPAmoco the fourth overpressure workshop in the biannual series, held for the first time in London, April 2000.

Overpressure is currently a high profile subject with the increasing trend towards exploration in deep water environments world-wide and the challenges of the subsalt play of the gulf of Mexico.

Prediction of reliable formation pore pressures emerged as the strongest topic throughout the two-day workshop. This is essential in order to plan and safely control wells, to avoid operational problems, and reduce technical and economic risks.

The international audience heard 23 oral paper presentations complemented by 11 poster displays, as well as discussion sessions. The emphasis was on case studies from key operational areas, such as Offshore West Africa, Gulf of Mexico, NW Australian Shelf, Brunei, Mid-Norway, North Sea and West of Shetland.

The first prize oral presentation was given to Hugh Dennis (Chief Geologist, Enterprise Oil, London) for his talk on the tilted petroleum-water contacts in the Pierce Field.

Extra 30 Year's Oil and Gas Supply

An independent and unique study of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas resources by Robertson Research International Limited, the European petroleum consultant, has estimated that man's efforts over the last 100 years have so far found three quarters of the world's petroleum resources.

The new approach has been based upon the study of fundamental building blocks of generation, migration and trapping of hydrocarbons. This was addressed by examining the movement of the continents through geological time and the identification of areas most suitable for the formation of oil and gas. The assessment has not considered political boundaries, but the political implications of the results are profound.

Richard Fowler, Managing Director of Robertson, who recently was at the World Petroleum Congress states, "Robertson agrees with the recently published proportion of the relative importance of oil versus gas in the world." Fowler continues to say, "but our results indicate a yet-to-be-found reserve base of 864 billion barrels against the 2634 billion barrels found to date and this is at variance with the extremely large estimate by the United States Geological Survey of 1634 billion barrels yet-to-find."

Of approximately 700 sedimentary basins worldwide, some 330 basins containing more than 1000 plays account for over 95% of the total conventional oil and gas resources globally. These basins are concentrated in a belt from Mexico in the west, through North Africa and the Middle East to Indonesia in the east.

100K Boost from Mobil

Memorial University and Mobil Canada officially opened the Mobil Canada Laboratories for Computational Geosciences in the Department of Earth Sciences May 1. The two computer laboratories to assist students and faculty in geosciences were established through a $100,000 donation from Mobil Canada.

The Mobil Canada Laboratories for computational Geosciences include a general-purpose lab for instructional use which houses 15 Pentium computers and a laser printer, all linked to the university's network and to the Internet.

Software available on these computers is used for analysis of gravity and magnetic data sets, and for seismic data processing and interpretation.

The $100,000 donation form Mobil Canada is a corporate gift to The Opportunity Fund, Memorial University's five-year fund raising campaign. The fund has raised approximately $30 million in private sector support, which will be matched by the provincial government on a dollar-for-dollar basis. To date, Mobil Canada has given more than $2 million to support education and research at Memorial University.

New Technology Promises Oil and Gas Companies use of Geophysical Software without Huge Upfront Expenditures

Long time software development company, Mercury International Technology, Inc. (MIT) announced the development of its software applications service provider technology and service that will make high-end software applications more accessible and affordable.

The service, Interactive Internet Processing (IIP), was developed by MIT initially to serve geophysical exploration for petroleum and mineral deposits. MIT boasts a worldwide network of super-computer hardware to be utilized in tandem with customers' choices of a sizeable selection of popular commercial software packages.

The service can be activated by MIT customers from any computer connected to the Internet and is provided through a webpage access. This is available on a "pay-as-you-use" basis at approximately $25/hour with user times calculated to the nearest minute.

MIT is offering demonstrations of the IIP service to industry organizations upon request or simply go to their web page at goiip.com. For further information, contact Ralph Gobeli at rgobeli@mitixl.com or 1-918-492-1677.

eSeis Acquires Ulterra Geoscience and Geoscope Exploration Technologies

In a consolidation of three major players in the breakthrough field of Seismic Petrophysics, eSeis, Inc. of Houston has acquired Calgary-based Ulterra Geoscience Ltd. and GeoScope Exploration Technologies, Inc., and merged with Houston-based Exploration Specialty Processing.

Ulterra Geoscience Ltd., established in 1993, is a leader in geophysical research and product development, focusing on rock / fluid interpretation technology. NEW TECHNOLOGY PROMISES OIL Ulterra's products have been marketed by GeoScope Exploration Technologies since 1998. Exploration Specialty Processing has been providing advanced data processing, inversion, and AVO modeling services for the Houston oil and gas industry since 1996.

eSeis officers include Shawn Porche (CEO) and Roger Young (CTO), formerly CEO and CTO of Exploration Specialty Processing; Dan Morris (President) and Devon Dowell (COO), most recently President and Vice President of Coherence Technology Company (purchased by Core Lab (NYSE:CLB - news) and Scott Jamieson (President, eSeis, Canada) formerly Vice President, Operations for GeoScope.

Boyd GeoMatics Becomes First Internet Provider of AltaLIS Topographic Base Data

Larry Herd, President and CEO of Boyd GeoMatics Ltd. ("BGM") and James Chorel, General Manager of AltaLIS Ltd. are pleased to announce the signing of Spatial Data Warehouse's first Value Added Service Provider agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, BGM will display all of AltaLIS's topographic Base data of the province of Alberta on the Internet in conjunction with their aerial ortho-imagery data.

As the agent for Spatial Data Warehouse Ltd., AltaLIS has the responsibility of making Alberta's base mapping infrastructure more available, accessible, accurate and affordable. Spatial Data Warehouse (SDW) is a not-for-profit organization formed in June 1996 when the Government of Alberta discontinued its traditional role of funding and managing Alberta's digital mapping. The core purpose of SDW is to maintain and promote the broadest possible distribution of provincial digital mapping that meets the immediate needs of the Alberta marketplace and preserves the mapping systems for the long-term benefit of Albertans. SDW is a consortium made up of Atco Electric, Atco Gas, Atco Transmission, TELUS Advanced Communications Inc., TransAlta Utilities Corporation and the Government of Alberta.

Boyd GeoMatics Ltd. is a Calgary-based company that develops and markets on-line geographic information management services for oil and gas, municipal, forestry and agriculture applications.

Access/TX – Kestrel's Data Browser

Kestrel Data (Canada) Limited is pleased to announce the release of a secure, internet-enabled version of its data base browser, Access/TX. This version of their product overcomes the need for a modem and a dedicated telephone line, and allows direct connection to Kestrel via the Internet.

Kestrel utilizes the extremely secure Shiva LanRover VPN Express gateway. The VPN gateway allows the creation of secure virtual private networking (VPN) "tunnels" through inherently insecure public networks, such as the Internet. Access/TX can now be accessed through Kestrel's web page at http://www.kestreldata.net or directly through a TelNet session, once a password and login have been assigned and the Shiva client software has been loaded.

Access/TX offers their clients a number of very flexible ways to interrogate their databases in real time. The system will provide information on the status of each document, whether it is in or out of the data center, and will allow on-line ordering of both data and services.

Contact Peter McCann at pmmccann@kestrel.ab.ca or Ms. Annet Shea, Kestrel's Customer Service Manager, at ashea@kestrel.ab.ca for more information.